How Our Leagues Are Scheduled

The traditional way that leagues are scheduled (teams are placed in fixed divisions and each division plays at a fixed day/time each week), while convenient for scheduling purposes, is not in the best interests of the players or coaches, so we don't do it that way.

Scheduling By Division Is Bad For Players.

Apart from the occasional rare exception, if you look at the final standings for any division in any league, you will find a couple of strong teams who won all but 1 or 2 games and a couple of weak teams who lost all but 1 or 2 games. None of those teams got a good level of competition out of playing in that division, the teams that played them didnt get a good level of competition out of those games, and so the players from all of the teams did not get the chance to develop as they would with good competition.

When we group teams into divisions it is for ranking purposes only. In addition to scheduling games between the teams in a given division, we also schedule crossover games with other divisions. So, for example if we had a U12 Girls division with a weak team X, a medium ability team Y, and a stong team Z then X, Y, and Z would all [probably] have 1 game against each other but weak U12 Girls team X would also get some games against U11 girls and strong U12 Girls team Z would get some games against U13 Girls and maybe even against U12 Boys (based on the preferences they set when registering).

In that way every team in every division gets as many tightly competitive games as possible while we still have enough information from the game results to rank the teams for standings (if we are keeping standings in a given season).

What that means though is that we cannot say "U12 Girls play between 11am and 3pm on Saturdays" because a given U12 girls team might play against some U11 Girls or U12 Boys or U13 Girls if that makes sense for them competitively so Scheduling By Division and having a specific time set aside for "U12 Girls" is meaningless to any given team.

That's OK though because...

Scheduling By Division Is Bad For Coaches.

Imagine you coach 3 teams - U12 Girls, U14 Girls, and U13 Boys. If our league advertised that U12 Girls plays from 11am-3pm on Saturdays, U14 Girls plays 3pm-6pm on Saturdays and U13 Boys plays 2pm-5pm on Sundays then that would mean that you would be at our facility for about 4 to 7 hours every Saturday (you'd arrive in the 11am-3pm window for your U12 game and hang around until your U14 game in the 3pm-6pm window) and at least 1.5 hours every Sunday (since you'll need to arrive before the game and leave after talking to the team/parents). That is a huge time commitment for a coach and has a lot of downtime while they are just waiting for their next game.

Instead we focus on getting all of the games for every coach as close together on one game day every week, back to back if at all possible. So your games each week could be on any game day that your teams are available BUT whatever day that is, best case, you'll be at the facility just 1 day that week for a total of about 2 hours instead of being there 2 or 3 days for a total of about 8 hours.

Summary - Scheduling By Ability/Availability Is Good For Everyone!

When you register your team you tell us which days/times they are available to play, their ability level, and some additional information. After registration closes, we use the information you provided to group teams into as tightly competitive divisions as possible and then show you the list of teams you could be scheduled to play against and give you the chance to tell us if there's some teams in that list that you shouldn't play against, or any that we missed that you should play against. After that we create the schedule so you play the best subset of available teams from that list to provide tight competition, diversity of opponents and accomodate all schedule constraints.

Since this approach to scheduling allows your team to play the maximum possible number of your games against teams very close to you in ability, it helps you to develop your players by providing the most competitive environment possible in every game.

So before registration closes we cannot tell you which day/time your team will play, just that it will be at a time when you've told us they are available and the resulting schedule will give you the best possible competition and will be as convenient as possible for your coach.

Questions? Contact:

Ed Morton, ed@tournamart.com, 630-631-2571